


The Exchange, or, Written in Prophecy

by tinyporcelainehorses



Category: Parks and Recreation, Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Fun Nonsense, Gen, General Night Vale Weirdness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-21
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-01-03 17:42:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12151617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinyporcelainehorses/pseuds/tinyporcelainehorses
Summary: Back in the seventies, the town of Pawnee was briefly run by a cult that worshipped a lizard God named Zorp.  At that time, a particular local government exchange was arranged, forty years in advance, written in prophecy and sealed beneath the city council chambers.It was written that a series of governmental employees, mostly of the Parks and Recreation department, would visit a town somewhere in the vast deserts of America's Southwest (although exactly which state was something of a mystery...)Parks and Recreation Department?  Welcome... to Night Vale.





	1. Arrival

**Author's Note:**

> It's finally time to post some of my work online! This will be going up a chapter at a time, but it's not going to be particularly long overall. No idea exactly how long it'll be.
> 
> I was surprised this wasn't a more popular crossover after realising how similar the shows are, in a lot of ways and plot points. Being in the middle of a rewatch of both means I've been spotting a lot of these parallels. Anyway, I thought that rather than whining about how more of this wasn't being written, I should just write my own and begin to fill the void.
> 
> I'm being comparatively loose with exact canon, but my estimation is that this takes place somewhere around season 4 of each show. Possibly. Time is weird in Night Vale, after all...

The desert stretched to infinity, empty, vast, and flat. It rolled out across the earth, horizon to horizon, broken only by the thread of near-empty asphalt the car was driving upon. Tom’s whining voice cut through the vast infinities. “Come _on_ , we have to be _somewhere!_ My phone’s nearly out of battery and I wanna get pictures of this weirdo town when we finally arrive!”  
“Well, I’m sorry,” Ben’s voice was an exercise in measured patience, “but I have to keep my phone charging in case the GPS starts working again, instead of telling us we’re in…” he picked up his phone and shook it, quizzically, “Newest Mexico.” He turned to Leslie. “That can’t be right, can it?” She shrugged.  
“This is stupid,” said Tom. “I _knew_ I should have ridden in the Lexus with Donna. I keep looking at her twitter feed and seeing what fun Andy and April are having drawing things on Jerry while he sleeps in the backseat. Look-” he waved the phone in Ben’s direction and sighed. “But now I can’t even do that because I can’t even get data out here. What kind of vacation is this meant to be if there’s no internet?”

From Tom’s left came a long, slow thundering: the sound of Ron Swanson surfacing from the depths of sleep. He looked at Tom in disdain. “Son,” he said, “you are surrounded by miles of majestic desert.”  
“But Ron, I-”  
“It is beautiful. It is hot, and, most importantly, it is _silent_.” He looked at Tom, moustache twitching. “I suggest you follow its example.”

The car rolled along the highway. They were lost, but that was no matter - there were no exits to turn off at, no signs to read, nothing to do but follow the road as the lights started to dim. Absently, Leslie flicked the radio on. Static. Static on every frequency, as the highway curved through endless miles of empty desert. A few stray, fleeting a signals; a snatch of music, a woman’s voice slowly reading numbers. And then, a man’s voice, appearing as suddenly as the roadsign ahead that no one could quite read…

_The pen is mightier than the sword. The pen was found under a new moon, and the nib still glints with its faint, pearly light. The pen is heavy, with the weight of years, the weight of a thousand words. Ink is bleeding from the pen, as the sword lies, useless and rusting. The pen is so very, very mighty._

And the sign swam into focus at the same time the man spoke, the words in perfect unison:

Welcome… to Night Vale.

**Leslie**

Pawnee, Indiana. Best, and dare I say brightest, of America’s towns. But despite our long and proud history of achievement, we have a few murkier patches. Apart from the way we treated women, the Wamapoke, and our misguided tolerance for a few years of a business known as Sue’s Salads. But back in the seventies, Pawnee was briefly run by a cult who worshipped a twenty eight foot tall lizard God called Zorp. And during that time, there were a few… eccentricities, such as the establishment of the Local Government Exchange Program. Programs like this aren’t too unusual; you go to another city, sometimes in another state, and look at how they run things there. Mostly, they run every few years, and a few different departments go every time to just… compare notes on the day to day business of government. You know, how they colour code their binders, their managerial structures for big projects, their hopes, fears and dreams…

Anyway, this program was arranged a little differently, in that it was arranged forty years in advance to happen just once, now. Also, even though it was years before most of us were born, our names were written as the ones who were supposed to go, because we were ‘named in prophecy’. Well, most of us. Everyone at city hall all just sort of assumed that ‘The Hopeless One, Devourer of Joy’ meant Jerry.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

Donna pulled the handbrake in the carpark. “Well,” she sighed, “I suppose this is it.”

April stepped out the car, with Andy trailing behind her. She looked around her at the sandwastes hovering at the edge of civilisation waiting to sweep in and reclaim the buildings from the humans who had so foolishly created them. She looked up, her face bathed in the mysterious, slowly blinking green glow of the lights above the Arby’s. She looked towards City Hall, to the municipal worker nonchalantly scrubbing bloodstains from its steps. The breeze carried in the scent of invisible pie from the Moonlite All Nite Diner and the reassuring sounds of life in any big city: screaming, and then silence. She turned to Andy. “Babe, I love it here. Can we move?”

Chris unfurled himself from the front seat. “I’ve been to a lot of different towns across Indiana,” he said, “and I’ve seen all sorts of things. But this is literally the strangest place I have ever been.”

Leslie’s car pulled into the lot and emptied onto the concrete slowly. For a moment, everyone stood on the concrete, lost in the strangeness of the situation. The only ones unphased were Andy and April, who were, by now, making out while lying across the hood of the Lexus.

“Well,” said Ben, “I guess we’re here.”  
“Okay,” said Leslie. She had had almost an entire six seconds to gather herself, and in that time she had managed to gather her energies by imagining her favourite picture of Joe Biden riding shirtless on a horse, made a four point plan of action, and begun wondering exactly what she was going to say to Ann when she called her to let her know they’d arrived. Man, the long journey must have really knocked her out of her stride. “First things first, we need to-”

But even Leslie was struck dumb by the person who rounded the corner and entered the parking lot. He - or she, or entirely possibly neither, it was very hard to tell - stood approximately ten foot tall, moving easily with impossibly long, strides. They seemed to glow, though they gave off no light; if anything, they seemed to somehow suck the dying sunlight into themselves. They entered the carpark with their elegant gait, although they were, in fact, walking approximately two foot above the ground, never actually setting foot upon it, with broad, black feathered wings beating impossibly lazily. They smiled genially at the assembled Pawneeans, giving Donna a particular nod. As they reached the door of the Moonlite All Night Diner, which was far too short for them to possibly fit inside it, they touched the doorknob, and promptly disappeared.

April looked after it with gaping eyes and a burning desire to somehow die and become exactly like the dark figure. Andy, meanwhile, was comparatively unperturbed. He’d never been to the South-West - or anywhere much outside of Pawnee - before, and was determined to keep an open mind. Maybe this was just how most people here looked. It was left to Ben to broach the awkward silence. “Was that… an angel?” He asked. “Did we just see an angel?”

“I can honestly say that I-” began Chris. But he was unable to continue because both car radios at this point switched themselves on, and instead of the smooth tones of the local news announcer, they let out an ear-splittingly loud klaxon, accompanied by the sound of a multitude of voices all chanting “Forbidden Knowledge”, over and over again. The sound was soon accompanied by everyone present trying to best work out how to turn this off at the same time, to no great effect. Suddenly, among the general chaos, the radios stopped. The sudden silence filled the parking lot, stifling. As everyone looked up from the cars, they saw a child standing there. He was hollow eyed, staring emptily at them with a gaze that somehow put Leslie in mind of Orin. He opened his mouth and words came. It would not, necessarily, be a fair assumption to say that the hollow child spoke the words. But the child’s mouth was moving, and the words were said, even if that voice was some octaves deeper than would normally come out of a child that age. And even if his lips appeared to be moving with a ten second delay. **“THE DELEGATION,”** the child said. **“YOU HAVE ARRIVED, IN ACCORDANCE WITH PROPHECY.”**

“We, uh, we’ve…” Leslie attempted to say.

The child beckoned a single finger, the nail blackened and somehow too long. **“COME,”** he said. **“THE CITY COUNCIL AWAITS.”**

“I, uh, don’t know if we should follow him,” said Leslie, trading concerned looks with Ben as Tom and Donna exchanged quizzical ones.  
Ron, meanwhile, smiled. “Well,” he said, “I think we should follow him. You’re usually all for filling children with the joy of government, Leslie. While I’d obviously rather his labour benefited a private enterprise, I’ve always been in favour of a child working.”

The child in question stood silent, waiting, still beckoning with his finger.

Leslie sighed. “I suppose so,” she said.  
“Maybe that’s just how they do things here,” Chris suggested. And, together, the Pawneeans slowly followed the child from the lot up to the steps of City Hall.

Some minutes after everyone had left, in the backseat of Donna’s car, Jerry awoke. He sat up, removing his travel sleep mask, oblivious to the graphic drawing of a wolf disembowelling a child April had drawn on his right cheek, or the simple legend of “MOUSE RAT RULES” that Andy had added to his left. He stretched his arms out. “Well, guys, I always feel a lot better after a short nap, that’s what I always say,” he said. He paused, and took in the empty lot around him, the lights blinking in the sky up ahead. “Guys?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Parks Department waits for the City Council. Tom texts Jean-Ralphio, Nightvale gets under Ron's skin, Leslie meets Tamika Flynn and Ben's acknowledgment of angels catches up to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last piece would have worked well enough as a stand-alone, but believe it or not, I do have plans to continue (or even finish, who knows) this fun crossover exercise. Hope everyone enjoys!

**Jean Ralphio** TOMMY H whats poppin.

**Tommy** Finally! It has taken me 4ever to get signal. What’s the sitch? 

**Jean Ralphio** I was thinking we are going OUT 2NITE. I am talking one wild time - music, strobe lights, women, sauna, EJECTED?, buying pills from our cab driver, the WORKS. 

**Tommy** Nah, I can’t, man.

**Jean Ralphio** Come ON we are gonna tear shit UP. Drinks are on you but I got my wisdom teeth out two weeks ago and my mouth still kinda hurts so can you say MEDICAL MALPRACTICE SUIT? I’ll pay you back later if you spot me. It is gonna be POPPING, hit me up.

**Tommy** I told you, I’m out of town for work. Some lame town in the desert called

\- Tom’s thumb brushed the N key. At this point, his phone - which hadn’t been too reliable today as it was - flashed entirely red, emitted a strong smell of decay, and started showing him videos of waspnests being built inside human skeletons. Once the last bone had crumbled to dust, it switched itself off. Again? He sighed.

“How long do we have to wait here anyway?” he asked. “They told us ages ago that City Council would be ready to see us soon, and that was _forever_ ago.”

April sighed at him. “The words they used,” she said, “were that we’d be granted audience.” She looked around the anteroom’s portraits and took them in - the hooded figures, the screaming man of impossible age whose bleeding eyes followed you around the room, the pleasant still life of a bowl of pears that had the habit of rotting when you moved your eyes away from it. She felt something close to reverence. She wondered if this was what other people felt in church. Seeing Donna sprawled across three chairs like a cat, April swung her legs over her husband’s lap, and turned to him. 

“Babe, you know how on the night we got married, I made you promise to move to Transylvania and adopt a creepy adult orphan with me?"

“Of course,” said Andy.

“Well, I’ve changed my mind,” said April. “We’re going to move to this town, and we’re going to adopt…” her eyes scanned the pictures on the wall, and she settled on one of an elderly woman covered in a distressing number of maggots, “her. I saw a dog park for Champion. It’ll be perfect.” 

“Sure,” said Andy. “It’s probably easier than Transylvania anyway, since that’s all the way down in South America and, you know, made up.” 

“How long has it been?” asked Leslie, the tapping of whose foot was just beginning to annoy Ron. “An hour? Two?”

Ben looked at his watch. “It’s been ten minutes, guys,” he said. “I’m sure they’re very busy, just give them some time. 

“Well,” said Chris, “I am going to pass the time in silent meditation. You know, my therapist, Doctor Richard Nygard, recommends that for the sake of my mental health, I spent at least-” A glare from Ron ushered him into silence. Ron took a stick from his pocket, unfolded his pocket knife, and began to whittle.

**Ron**

I don’t hold with filling silence with meaningless chatter. When I was eight years old, my mother had to leave town on some important business, and left me with the greatest babysitter known to man: a feral, sleeping cougar. I learnt an important lesson that day: a man should know how to occupy himself, as quietly as possible. But between Leslie tapping her foot and Tom’s sotto voce whining about his pho- I’m so sorry. Sotto voce - what is that, French? I apologise wholeheartedly and I am completely disgusted in myself. God, this town does terrible things to all of us.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

“Miss Knope?”

The girl’s voice made them all jump - she seemed to have appeared in the room, as if from nowhere. She was a good seven or eight feet away from the only door, which was still shut tight, and the room had a sign apologising for the lack of windows due to “the incident” - so that option was out too.

“Yes, I - how did you -” Leslie looked their guest over. She was black, around sixteen - Leslie had never been too good with children’s ages - and dressed in slightly stained camo pants with a practical looking olive tanktop, criscrossed with a bandolier of ammunition. She had a large knife strapped to each thigh, streaks of camoflauge facepaint under each eye, and a worn green backpack, with a well-thumbed copy of John Crowley’s 1981 novel _Little, Big: The Faerie’s Parliament_ sticking out of the top. Attached to the backpack was a black badge that said, in a cheery, yellow font, **“I SURVIVED THE SUMMER READING PROGRAMME, 2013 - CAN YOU SAY THE SAME?”** After a moment drinking in her appearance, Leslie attempted to settle on a question, compromised with ‘all of them’, and blurted out: “who did you get why here?” She paused. “Also, what?

The girl took a breath. “My name is Tamika Flynn, and I’m doing the Lee Marvin Nightvale Citizen Summer Internship with the city council.” Leslie perked up. The young getting involve in municipal government was always a good thing. After all, as a great woman once said, children are our future. Teach them well and let them lead the way. “I came in that way,” Tamika shrugged, nodding toward a loose ceiling tile. Ron looked at her, furrowing his brow, and nodded approvingly.

“Well, Tamika-” Leslie began, but before she got a chance to say what might have been the only opportunity in her political career to say “take me to your leader”, a figure came crashing through the same ceiling panel Tamika had crashed through. They were wearing an enormous and garishly pink muffler, a sequinned purple cloak, and, perhaps most prominently, a cheap plastic tiger mask of the kind you could expect to see at a child’s birthday party. There was a moment of silence as the room stared, with the exception of Tamika, who seemed unbothered. The figure produced a badge holder, opened it, brushed away spores of an unknown fungus, and pointed with a dramatic flourish into the group of Pawneeans.

“Benjamin Wyatt!”

Ben looked, concerned. “Y.. Yes?” He asked.

“Benjamin Wyatt, you are under arrest for the illegal acknowledgment of beings who are incorrectly called angels.”

Ben squinted at the blood-smeared badge the officer was waving at him. Despite the flecks hanging onto the grooves, the star clearly read “Sheriff Sam”. “Are you… are you a _cop?_ ”

“You have the right to remain silent,” they continued, unperturbed, “and anything you do say may be used against you in a court of law.”

“Am I being _arrested_? That makes no sense, what did I even…”

“Anything you do not say, but that government officials sense in your mind with our Dark Abilities, may be used against you in a secret court where the only rule of law is governmental might.”

“Babe, can you-” Ben sputtered, “Is this…”

Leslie, meanwhile, wasn’t listening to him but was shouting all out at the officer. “This is an egregious overreach of justice and these trumped up charges will never-”

“Now, hang on, buddy,” Chris said, “I’m sure we can find a way to settle this sensibly. Why don’t we-”

April, amidst the general turmoil, had climbed atop a chair,thrust her hands towards the sky, and was screeching at the top of her voice, “THROW HIM INTO THE DEEPEST DUNGEON!”

Tamika turned to her. “Don’t be stupid,” she said, “he’ll probably just be thrown into the abandoned mineshaft in Radon Canyon, outside town.”

“We will find the FINEST lawyer,” Leslie continued, “and we will-”

Sheriff Sam had produced a pair of neon green child’s plastic handcuffs, and was busy trying to squeeze them around Ben’s adult wrists. “You do not have the right to a lawyer,” they continued, “unless you first leave milk on their windowsill for no shorter than six calendar months. You are not guaranteed the-”

By now, Ron and Donna were both doing their best to hold back Leslie. Purple with fury, she was barely restrained as she hurled a stream of insults that would make a sailor blush at the Sheriff. Chris dithered, trying to talk some sense into someone who had decided that furry purple high heeled boots were a good fashion choice for stopping crime. Meanwhile, April stood atop her chair, cackling, while Tom and Andy were sitting shocked. Standing, unworried, at the edge of everything was Tamika Flynn, who watched patiently as Ben was escorted out the door by Sam. Ben’s face was drained, his eyes wide, and his hair was even, in as drastic a situation as this, starting to lose some of its trademark bouffant energy.

Once he left, all the righteous fury that had been sustaining Leslie slowly leaked out. Like a punctured balloon, her muscle tone slowly gave out and she flopped into Ron’s waiting arms. Tamika stood, watching coolly.

Andy frowned. “Hey,” he said, “has anyone seen Jerry?”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jerry attempts to find his feet in Nightvale. Meanwhile, Ben's arrest continues.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A third chapter, so soon after the second? You'd better believe it.
> 
> Here's hoping the eleven hour train journey this was written on, and the fact that I've been awake so long I've started very mildly hallucinating, give this the requisite Nightvale feeling.

Jerry lay back on the hood of the car, sighed, and did his best to drink in the night sky.

He didn’t get out of state enough. It was funny, really - he’d been planning his first big trip with Gayle for years. It was their wedding anniversary, and they’d been due to go to Disney. The girls were coming too - the hotels were booked, the flights paid for, the matching t-shirts all made up. They’d been talking about it for nearly a year. But of course, Leslie had come in to work one morning last week, saying something about a prophecy and a long work trip. He didn’t always hear the details, and why would he need to? Leslie was his boss, and, well - how could he say no? Pawnee, as she’d reminded him with startling regularity almost every time it was Gail’s birthday, valentines day, or the birth of his first grandchild, needed him. “God, Larry,” she’d said last time. “I don’t know how you can be so selfish. There’ll be other babies. There’s only one Pawnee.”

It wasn’t just the city, either. His friends needed him. His friends liked to play little jokes sometimes - his cheeks were still red, and very smudgy from the fifteen minutes he’d spent scrubbing off Andy and April’s drawings from the trip down - but they were depending on him, and he had to do his best to help out. Even if his best frequently just resulted in him getting yelled at anyway.

But now? His friends were nowhere in sight. They seemed to have arrived, wherever they were - somewhere big, and vast, and empty, judging by the sky. He was sure the gang had had a good reason for rushing off and forgetting about him. After all, they always did. He’d decided to just wait by the car. Better that than wandering into trouble.

He’d tried listening to the radio for a while, but he needed to stretch his legs - and whatever the _Svitzian March of the Damned_ was, it just wasn’t the sort of music a simple guy like him could get into and appreciate. It was April’s sort of thing. He turned the radio off, ambled a few laps around the deserted parking lot, the night air still warm on his skin, and ended up lying across the hood, staring up at the stars.

What a beautiful night. Still, clear. He could still remember being a child, sitting on his dad’s lap, looking up at the stars. He’d point to them, try to tell his Dad the names. Of course, the names he picked were all wrong, and his Dad had let him know, mercilessly correcting him, making him repeat himself over and over until he got them right, ignoring the tremor in his child’s voice as he ruthlessly told him that “you’ll know Alpha Centauri, damn it, and you’ll _like it_.” Jerry sighed, finding himself misty-eyed. It was a long time since he’d thought about spending some quality time with his old man. He missed it.

The sky was so clear up above, and the stars were so beautiful, that as he looked up at them, he could almost imagine dotted lines, holding them together. Huge lines, like he was living under a giant star chart. Like the great, glowing coils of the universe were mapped, and planned, and preserved in simple dotted lines and arrows, and he was the one person who was trusted with this information. He chuckled - the thought of it! A bozo like him, given some kind of secret that would actually matter. Well, it was nice to dream.

He was startled out of his reverie by a loud hissing noise, and sat up quickly, smacking his head on the windshield, to see… something, some strange creature skittering around the trash. Its six legs clicked as it walked, and it’s fur was stained by a strange, rust coloured mange. When he collided with the windshield, it turned its head to him, and all four eyes looked at him, mandibles wiggling like it was deciding whether or not he’d make a suitably tasty snack.

But before he could cry out, yelp (in a voice he knew, deep down, he would get laughed at for later) for Leslie to come and save him, please - before he could even intake breath, a man rounded the corner, wearing a plaid shirt. Unworried, he shooed the creature away.

“Damn raccoons,” he said, laughing, and made his way to Jerry. He reached out a hand, and before Jerry knew exactly what was happening, he found his own hand being shaken, vigorously - and just a touch too long and too tight.

“Howdy,” said the stranger, “you look like you’re new in town.”

“M-m-maybe,” said Jerry, still recovering from being chittered at by whatever sort of raccoons they apparently had out West. He’d thought the ones in Pawnee were tough, but, oh boy…

“My name’s Steve Carlsberg,” the man said. “Welcome to Nightvale, partner!”

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

**Ben**

I guess I wasn’t really afraid of cops until the impeachment. I can still remember being dragged out of office by the town cop who came to your highschool last year to do a DARE presentation. The crowd was chanting “Ice Clown”, over, and over. And I don’t know how much of a common experience that is to have when you’re eighteen, but I guess that ever since, however law-abiding I’ve been, I’m always just worried that… well, that something like this will happen. And, well, here I am. Sorry, Mom and Dad.

Ben wasn’t, if he was being totally honest, entirely sure when the bag had gone over his head - after he was bundled into the Secret Police Helicopter, everything had sort of blurred into one. He’d had his eyes screwed shut anyway, willing this to be a bad dream, trying to ignore the digging pain of the tiny handcuffs around his wrists. If he kept his eyes shut long enough, he reasoned, over the battling sounds of whirring rotors, and Sheriff Sam and the pilot singing the Nightvale Secret Police Fight Song at the top of their lungs and to two entirely different tunes, if he could just screw his eyes up tight enough, he’d open them and be in bed with Leslie, waking up at the start of a brand new day. She’d tell him about her dream - always the same one, and they both knew the inauguration speech by heart by now - and he’d tell her about his crazy dream about a weird little town where he’d got _arrested_. Then, she’d say something reassuring, and she’d call him babe and kiss him, and a little later, maybe they’d head to JJ’s.

That was what was going to happen when he opened his eyes. He was invested in it. He’d spent a lot of time working on the details of this harmless little fantasy, even over the sound of Sam and the pilot singing “to protect and serve/to serve and protect/to make sure all wrong doers stop and get wrecked” over and over again. So it had extremely rude of the universe that, when he opened his eyes, he didn’t get _any_ of that, and instead got to look at the inside of a burlap sack.

Eventually, though, the sound of the rotors wound down. The singing continued, although by now Sam and the pilot were singing their way through a song that, as far as Ben could tell, was called “I fought the law/ because I was misguided and knew only sin/ and one day perhaps my children’s children/ will pay off my debt to society and my name will no longer be a disgrace /upon the fair tongue of Nightvale’s loving and honest citizens”. Somehow, it was even less catchy than it sounded. He felt himself being lifted bodily, carried down slopes longer and more winding than any police station should contain. He’d long given up screaming, begging or pleading - the only reaction they seemed to invoke was an enthusiastic “Yeah!” or “alright!” coming over the helicopter’s radio from other officers. Before too long, he found himself set down on a floor that felt disturbingly like damp earth, heard the slamming of a metal door, and the singing voices moved into the distance. Now, they were singing “I shot the Sheriff”, Sam singing the lead of “I shot the Sheriff”, and their coworker echoing them with “and the Sheriff remained unharmed through their great wisdom and also their kevlar vest”.

The light shining through the burlap sack was dim, but there was some kind of light out there. He tried wiggling his head to shake the sack free, and when that didn’t work, tried nodding violently. After that, too, failed to free him, he was just plotting his next move when a soft voice next to him startled him so badly that he jumped. That didn’t free him from the sack either.

“Greetings, interloper” they said, their voice weak and gentle. Ben thought hard about their tone, and decided that despite the words, it sounded like they were possibly being friendly.

“Oh. Oh, um, hi.” 

“Hi,” the voice said placidly. Ben wondered where to take the conversation from here. Years of doing municipal budgets with Chris, and years of running public meetings with Leslie, had left Ben with a fairly good grasp of how to deal with small town crazy, a commodity Nightvale seemed to have plenty of. Admittedly, it was a little different right now, because he was bound and had a burlap sack over his head. Okay, on second thoughts? He had zero idea how to react to this situation. Think, Wyatt, he though. What would Leslie do? He pictured his wife - pictured her red hot fury and volley of threats. Okay, maybe not Leslie. What about Chris? What would Chris do? After a moment’s thought, he decided that firmly telling his new cellmate that they were going to be best friends and that he couldn’t wait to get to know them and their journey through this life was not going to work either.

The actions of his friends exhausted, he set them aside and decided to go for prison movie cliché. “What are you in for?” He asked, with a failed attempt to inject any sort of nonchalance in his voice. He wished he’d got the tone right. He was, after all, a hardened criminal now, in the eyes of the law. He could picture the headlines: **ICE CLOWN CAUSES SCENE IN SMALL TOWN.** The headlines, he had to admit, didn’t get much more specific than that, because he still wasn’t exactly sure what crime he’d committed and when.

“Oh, me?” asked his cellmate. “I’m just here for wheat and wheat by-product related crime.”

Ben did his best to seem unflappable. He knew that drugs had a lot of different slang names. He also knew that he should never, ever google what any of them were, because he didn’t want to get arrested by the cops - so he had no idea what any of these slang names were. Still, this sounded like small town drug crime to him, alright, he thought, bravely taking on the mantle of crime connoisseur. “So,” he said, “you, uh, think you’re making bail any time soon?”

“Oh, maybe,” said the voice next to him. “I haven’t been here that long. Just two or three years. I’m sure someone will come for me soon.”

“Sorry, did you say two or three _years?_ ”

“I think so. It’s hard to say, really, isn’t it, how fast time is going.” The voice sighed, with absolutely no regards for the building panic inside of Ben now. “When it comes down to it, really, what is time anyway? It can’t really be that important.”

“You’ve been here for two or three years? Have you had a _trial?_ ”

“Well, no, but they have HBO here now. It’s not _all_ bad, you see.”

“I could be here for years? Just because I mentioned something in a parking lot about an angel? How can-”

The blare of the klaxon, the voices shouting **“FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE“** , the rush of hobnailed boots towards the cell - somehow, in retrospect, Ben felt like it should all have been obvious. He should have seen it all coming, sat there, cool and prepared. He definitely shouldn’t have started thrashing around, screaming out for Leslie. But as he was dragged out of the cell, as a second, larger bag was forced over the bag over his head, somehow, being _double arrested_ \- as he was repeatedly reminded by the officers dragging him - felt exactly as scary as being arrested the first time.


End file.
